Nola

Ayoola

Nola Ayoola

Nola Ayoola treats memory as something you can touch, letting color, texture, and rhythm carry lived experience into layered, tactile worlds. Working between Lagos and New York, she builds sensory terrains where personal history, Yoruba heritage, and everyday environments weave into charged surfaces. In her hands, collage becomes a way of feeling through material, holding rupture and repair together so that a different kind of shared space can appear.

In the Words of the Artist

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My work functions as a kind of visual journal and portals where emotion and memory take on physical form. I use colour, movement, and tactile techniques like weaving, hand printing, and collage to build layered, sensory compositions. Each piece begins intuitively and often grows out of environments, personal experiences of rupture or transformation. I’m interested in how materials can hold feeling—how texture and gesture can translate emotion into something both intimate and expansive.

Collage, to me, is about pulling from memories - those geographical and emotional moments that hold movement and time - and piecing them back together in new ways. It’s a process of taking things apart and rebuilding, finding the connections between the past, the present, and what’s still unfolding. I see my work as a kind of map of dreams and experiences, where different fragments come together and shift. It’s really about creating beauty out of chaos, embracing the ebb and flow of life, and making sense of things that aren’t always linear.

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I don’t really have a fixed routine, but there’s definitely a kind of rhythm that happens when I’m making. I usually start by gathering things that draw me in—textures, colours, or materials that carry a certain memory or feeling. I like to be really in tune with my senses; it’s a very reflective process, especially because I have synesthesia. I tend to tap into memory and emotion a lot—it’s almost like following a sensory roadmap. Colours, textures, and sounds blur together and guide where the piece wants to go. It’s less about planning and more about responding to what I’m sensing in the moment or particular moments/ stories I'm trying to convey.

I tend to collect a mix of materials that carry texture, history, or emotional weight - things found like textiles, paper fragments, everyday-use items deconstructed, or natural elements from my environments. I’m drawn to materials that already have a story in them - something weathered, layered, or imperfect. I also hand-print patterns and create marks, reimagined motifs, and symbols that often become the basis of the backgrounds that I deconstruct and layer. In terms of imagery, I work a lot from memory and personal archives, blending those with abstract forms and tactile processes like collage or tapestry. It all becomes a way of building a dialogue between what’s found, felt, and imagined.

I think there’s a consistent thread in my work around memory, emotion, heritage, and environments. I’m really interested in how personal and collective histories overlap, and how fragments of experience can be reshaped through different materials and processes. A lot of my work looks at how emotion moves through these layers - how something deeply personal can also touch on shared memory or cultural heritage. Whether it’s through collage or other tactile, layered processes, I’m always exploring connection through a reimagined personal lens, looking at how our inner and outer worlds flow into each other.

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I’ve always been inspired by the traditional artisans I grew up around in Nigeria - basket weavers, Aladire’s (dyed fabric makers), and wood carvers. They’ve had a huge impact on my practice; I would watch them for hours, taking in their techniques and speaking with them about how they learned their craft, often passed down through generations. There’s something sacred about that kind of knowledge, and it has informed the way I carry and reimagine these traditions in my own work.

Artists like Simone Leigh and Sam Gilliam have also impacted me. When I first encountered Simone Leigh’s work, it shifted something in me - the way she merges form, history, and material around Black womanhood really resonated. It made me think differently about how emotion, heritage, and lived experience can be embedded into material, while Gilliam’s compositions, use of colour, and movement often inspired by the free spirit of jazz music, affirmed how much my senses guide my process. I’m also drawn to artists who work intuitively - abstract painters and collage artists whose layered or  textural worlds feel closely connected to how I approach my own practice.

I think collage is always evolving! For me, collage will always be about connection - piecing together fragments of memory, heritage, and emotion to create new meaning. I feel like it’s becoming more personal and expansive at the same time. A way for artists to map identity and environment in really dynamic ways. I definitely see it continuing to grow as a space where storytelling and experimentation meet.

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About the Artist

Nola Ayoola (b. 1992) is an interdisciplinary artist based between Lagos and New York. Her practice centers on creating hybrid-scapes: abstract landscapes that merge dreamlike visions with tangible forms, bridging sensation and emotion. These ethereal, ambiguous worlds draw from Ayoola’s lived experience and explore themes of identity, time, displacement, womanhood, and the unseen forces that shape the human experience.

Her work functions as a visual journal - portals that translate emotion and memory into form. Guided by heightened sensory awareness, she uses colour, movement, and tactile techniques such as weaving, hand printing, and collage to create intuitive, multi-sensory landscapes and portraiture. These works transport viewers into layered emotional and psychological spaces, often in response to personal adversity and emotional rupture.

The result is a practice that is both emotionally charged and conceptually rich, evoking reflection, vulnerability, and transformation. Ayoola’s compositions often incorporate symbolic materials and forms rooted in her Yoruba heritage, such as interwoven textiles and cowrie shells. Inspired by everyday life, her environments, and the people within them, these elements form a visual language that is culturally grounded yet expansive - shaped by memory and sensory experience, and open to collective interpretation.

Named one of Artsy’s “5 Artists on Our Radar” in 2025, Ayoola has been recognised for the way she connects traditional forms with contemporary life. Her work has been shown at prominent international fairs and public installations. Ayoola holds degrees from the University of Bristol and Parsons School of Design. Her studio is based in Lagos, where she grew up.

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